


Sea-Change

by goldtreesilvertree



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: A Different Kind of Decima, Alternative Universe - Deep Sea Research Base, Alternative Universe - Mermaids, Artistic Licence - Marine Biology, Bioluminescence, Eiffel is his own least favourite superhero, F/F, I am Team Sad Gay Mermaids and wow does it show, Infidelity(ish? I guess?), Lottie writes sci-fi mermaids this time, Mermaid!Lovelace (sort of), More Goddard-brand non-consensual science-ing, More Pine than a Christmas window display, Pining, The Minlace Mermaid AU nobody asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-02 10:01:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12724464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldtreesilvertree/pseuds/goldtreesilvertree
Summary: Goddard Futuristics had a long history with space travel, but not all its divisions looked to the stars. The oceans held so much untapped potential, after all, for medicine, for mining, for money, and international waters were just as beyond the reach of inconvenient laws. And so they began, with private islands, with submarines, and eventually with entire underwater research bases. There were so many worlds down there, just waiting to be explored (exploited), and all it would require was a little… creative adaptation.Not that this history lesson meant much to Renée Minkowski, who was currently floating outside her base.





	1. i: what the water gave me

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! I've finally returned to the AUs I started with, and I bring more mermaids! This bears no relation to my first mermaid AU and sticks much more closely to canon(ish), starting at the end of Season One. It's also heavily based on the premise of Seanan MacGuire's short story [Each to Each](http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/each-to-each/), but you don't have to read that to understand this, it's more for setting fun.

_i_ _:_ _what the water gave me_  

Goddard Futuristics had a long history with space travel, but not all its divisions looked to the stars. The oceans held so much untapped potential, after all, for medicine, for mining, for  _money,_  and international waters were just as beyond the reach of inconvenient laws. And so they began, with private islands, with submarines, and eventually with entire underwater research bases. There were so many worlds down there, just waiting to be explored ( _exploited_ ), and all it would require was a little… creative adaptation. 

Not that this history lesson meant much to Renée Minkowski, who was currently floating outside her base. The fact she’d survived this long without any time to acclimatise to the pressure was a credit to her training, but nobody could survive much longer without air. And nobody could break open an airlock sealed against her with a broken wrist. She struggled upwards almost instinctively, but the surface was a long way away. She wanted to fight for it anyway, make a last-ditch struggle for the sky, the sun, the air. Anything but the unending blue of the deep Hilbert had consigned her to. They would never even find her body, down here in the dark. Dominic had always said she’d leave him for the ocean. She hated to prove him right. But her lungs were burning for a breath she couldn’t take, and she couldn’t restrain them much longer. She was going to die here, and in her oxygen-starved delirium, she could almost feel the dark waters reaching out to take her. 

Mockingly, the air-lock’s activation light lit up just as she felt herself slip into the darkness. 

* 

She came to consciousness with her cheek pressed against the metal airlock floor, and leaned up on her good elbow to vomit seawater from her lungs. She was alive.Struggling for breath and beaten half to death by the pressure, but  _alive._  The strange euphoria of survival was almost enough that she didn’t notice there was someone else in the room with her until they spoke. 

“Great, you’re finally up. Be a  _doll_  and convince your AI friend to let me in?” It was a woman’s voice, low and lovely, and strangely familiar to her. 

“Who  _are_ you?” she murmured, more to herself than to the other woman. Gingerly, she began to push herself to her feet, trying not to flinch the sharp jabs of pain from her arm. “I don’t know you, but I  _know_ you…” 

“Great, now we’ve established your ‘commanding officer’ isn’t dead and we have an  _actual_ emergency, can we  _please_ get a way out of here?” the stranger snapped, in the direction of the ceiling rather than Minkowski. 

“I am sorry, I cannot take requests right now. Please try again later.” The voice was stilted, flat, and  _nothing_ like Hera.  

The other woman turned from the door to Minkowski, and with an exasperated sigh pulled her to her feet. She blinked up at her, dazedly realising where she was familiar from. She’d changed drastically since the photos from those awful case files, but…  

“You’re Isabel Lovelace,” she said, “Selberg’s last experiment. Rusalka. You’re  _alive._ ” 

Lovelace looked disgusted, and grabbed for her arm. “We can talk about  _that_ after you let me into my station.”  

Minkowski managed to turn her broken arm away in just in time, and reached for the access panel with the other. “Lieutenant Commander Renée Minkowski,” she intoned, praying that it would be enough for the backup programme. The door slid open, and she staggered through before the other woman, wanting nothing more than to collapse to the floor again. But this wasn’t the time, so she seized Lovelace’s arm for support, making her stagger slightly.  

“You need to help me,” she said. “Hilbert - Selberg - we found out about your crew. About the experiments. About  _everything._ But he seized control of the base and -” 

Lovelace’s disgust faded to confusion. “You’re not making any sense,” she said, slowly. “This was  _my_ base.” 

“Your mission was wiped from the records - Goddard’s records, anyway. There were some files left… lying around on the station system that came up during a crash. So Hera and I - the base’s AI, something’s wrong with her - did some digging, and we found  _everything._  What happened to your crew. What happened to you.” 

“It doesn’t matter.” Lovelace’s expression was unreadable once more. “What happened here?” She began to walk, letting Minkowski lean against her a little. 

“Hilbert - Selberg. He found some weird pictures on the new external cameras, took control of the base through some backdoor protocol, and managed to trap me outside the station.” She closed her eyes, trying to focus. “He’ll be in the bridge, he can have the whole base on lockdown from there. My communications officer… I don’t know what he’ll have done with him.” 

“Plan first, worry later,” Lovelace said, briskly. “What can we get to from here that’ll help us?” 

“Maintenance and Storage,” Minkowski replied, instantly, her mind beginning to clear. “He’ll have locked down the weapons, but with a little creativity, and a  _lot_ of acid…” 

Hilbert was distracted by his conversation with the comms panel when they entered the bridge, and started at the door slamming back. 

“Hello  _Commander_ Hilbert,” she said, through gritted teeth. He turned, and nearly fell back against the panel behind him.  

“ _You?_ ” He looked between the two women in horror and disbelief - disbelief that vanished when Lovelace slammed her hand around his throat. 

“ _Selberg_ _._ ” Her voice was low and deadly. “You really are a cockroach. Did you get bored of playing nicely with  _another_ crew and decide to start picking them off?” 

His eyes widened, and then -  _horribly_ \- he began to laugh. “Oh, I named you well,” he sputtered. “My Rusalka. My best work. You clever,  _clever_  girl.” 

Her hand tightened around his throat. “ _Don’t you dare-_ ” 

“Lovelace-” Minkowski began.  

“ _No._ Don’t you get involved in this.” She waved her away with her free hand. “This is between me and Elias. Just a little chat between old friends.” She turned her attention back to Hilbert. “Tell me, do you have  _anything_ to say to defend yourself?” 

Hilbert looked between the two women, then looked resigned. “Would it really matter to either of you at this point?”  

They looked at each other, united for once in their disbelief. “No,” they said, almost at the same time. Lovelace slammed his head back hard against the wall, and his eyes fluttered shut, and she hit him again, again, again, until: 

“ _Lovelace._ ” She stopped, turned back to the other woman. 

“ _What did I tell you-_ ”  

“I’m not protecting him,” Minkowski snapped, low and serious. “I’m protecting  _us._ We have no AI, no medical training beyond basic first aid, and  _no other scientists._ ” 

“And you want to keep  _him_ -”  

“What I want doesn’t factor into this.” She leant against the wall, swaying a little. “We  _need_ him. For now, anyway. So we’re going to stash him in a cupboard with a lock on the outside, find Eiffel, and try to get Hera back online-” She bent, trying to get a good enough hold on Hilbert to drag him along with her one good arm, only to be pulled back by Lovelace. 

“And splint your arm,” the other woman said, firmly. 

Minkowski laughed, bitterly, “Because my arm’s our biggest concern right now?” 

Lovelace rolled her eyes. “Because while I might not  _like_ you, there are only four people in this base right now. I’m not having you collapse on me just yet.” 

* 

Eiffel and Lovelace had enough first aid knowledge between them to splint and bandage her arm with a minimum of backseat doctoring from their patient. Eiffel even managed to dig up some painkillers from some godforsaken corner of Hilbert’s lab, and they numbed the pain enough that she think a little longer. Long enough to explain what she and Hera had found on the terminal in that disused lab. To explain who Lovelace was and how she’d survived. 

Eiffel’s eyes were huge. “So Hilbert was making  _mermaids_ down here? Like, with the singing and the talking fish companions?” 

Lovelace snorted, “Less adorable whimsy and more horrifically slow, painful death for most of his victims, but that’s the gist. Genetically modified, amphibious humans capable of surviving on the sea bed with little to no protective equipment.” 

“ _Wow._ That’s…” 

“Insane?” Minkowski closed her eyes. “ _Mermaids?_ Really? Don’t Goddard have normal,  _sane_ experiments to fund?” 

“Because looking for the Bloop was a normal, sane mission to send people on?” Eiffel joked, but nobody laughed. 

The lights above flickered slightly, and the computer announced in a dead AI’s voice that it was now December 26.  

Minkowski rested her head back against the wall with a sigh, closing her eyes. “And all I wanted this morning was a Christmas dinner with my crew.” What she’d gotten was a stab in the back, a near-death experience, and the revelation that her predecessor was both alive and, apparently, a mermaid. A mermaid who needed a place to sleep. “I’ll stay in the sickbay tonight,” she decided. “Lovelace, you can take my quarters. I’ll set something up for you… whenever I wake up.” 

Eiffel looked affronted, “You’re not giving  _her_ command-” 

“I’m not giving  _anyone_ anything,” she snapped. “We can talk about this in the morning. We can deal with Hilbert in the morning. But I have a broken arm and I feel like I just fought the entire ocean, so give me a break and show Lovelace where she can sleep.” 

She felt the weight of the cot shift as Lovelace got to her feet. “I can make my own way there, thanks,” she said, shortly, and her footsteps echoed away across the room. 

Eiffel stared after her. “ _Weird,_ ” he muttered, under his breath. 

“It’s been a day for  _weird_ ,” Minkowski replied, without opening her eyes. “Go on, get to bed yourself. I’ll be fine here.” 

He stood up from the cot, but she heard the bed opposite creak as he sat down on it. There was an awkward pause, then: “Do you mind if I stay here? Just to keep an eye on you.” 

Minkowski cracked one eye open and glared at him. “I’m  _fine,_  Eiffel.” But she relented at his expression, almost as exhausted as she felt. “OK, whatever. But if you snore, I’m kicking you out.”  

“Do you talk to Mr Koudelka like that?” he teased, and she flopped onto the bed with a groan. “Come on, Minkowski. Just… humour me a little. I’ve already lost one friend today.” 

She sighed. “I’m right here, Doug. I’ll be right here when you wake up, but I might be a  _little_ less homicidal if you let me sleep now. Computer, lights out.” She curled onto her side, trying to get comfortable on the bed. Finally, into the dark, she added: “We’ll get her back. We’ll be OK.” 

She wished she could make herself believe it. 

* 

She slept, somehow, despite the pain in her arm. She dreamed. She was a child on the beach again, jumping wave after wave, until the stones beneath her feet gave way suddenly to black water that reached up to swallow her. She struggled for the surface, for the air and the light she hadn’t seen in more than a year, but when her head breached the waves she still couldn’t breathe. 

She woke gasping, to Eiffel’s quiet snoring, and the darkness of the sickbay. Drowning in air rather than in water, as Selberg had intended for her. Not like his other victims, like Lovelace’s crew. The names from the file on Project Decima drifted through her head in the darkness: Merrow, Mace Fisher; Nix, Kuan Hui; Selkie, Samuel Lambert; Melusine, Victoire Fourier. And the last, lost subject: Isabel Lovelace. Rusalka. Men and women turned mythical monsters turned murder victims under Goddard’s orders. One of whom had come back from the dead to save her life. What had Hilbert done to her, that she’d survived being cast out of the airlock as Minkowski had been, trapped undrowning in the depths for years? What was she now? And what did she  _want?_  

The darkness, slowly giving way to an artificial daylight, held no answers for her. She’d have to find them herself. 


	2. ii: through corrupted lungs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lovelace learns more about what's been happening on the Hephaestus Base in her absence, while everyone learns a little more about the Decima virus than they ever wanted to know. Also featuring Team Mermaid and Eiffel's least favourite superhero.

_ii:_ _through corrupted lungs_  

It was strange, being back in the dead-calm air of the base after so long.  _Her_ base, Lovelace reminded herself. This was where she was meant to be. This was the first step to getting home at last. Never mind that it was hard to sleep in a bed again, when she could still feel the pull of the water outside, the pressure she hadn’t realised had been comforting until it was artificially stripped from her by the atmospheric controls. Nothing was the same any more. 

That wasn’t true. The base was almost identical, a few sealed-off modules aside. Minkowski’s endless  _nagging_ could almost be a stand-in for Sam’s, except that she’d trusted Sam, for all his officious, hidebound argumentativeness. She’d never thought she’d miss it. She’d never thought she’d miss Fisher rolling his eyes, or Hui and Fourier bickering. She’d never thought she’d have to watch them die, one by one, succumbing to a ‘pressure-induced sickness’ that was anything but what they’d been told. She’d learned to recognise the symptoms by the time she’d developed them. Shortness of breath. Growing pains in her limbs. Disorientation. Loss of balance.  _Agony_ as her lungs caught fire, as they reconfigured themselves under her skin, causing ‘panic attacks’ as her body struggled to breathe air as it was learning to breath water. That was when Selberg had given up on her, casting her out of the airlock when the delirium overwhelmed her as it had the others, when she was too weak to fight back. He hadn’t been watching when the adrenaline of drowning kicked in, finishing the process he’d begun. She could remember that moment with crystalline clarity, even as everything around it faded. The skin on her ribs  _ripping_ apart, revealing the gills that had been growing beneath. The webs between her fingers and toes had come last, and she’d  _hated_ them. Permanent marks of what he’d done, harder to hide than if he’d branded her. But they’d kept her alive, and when she got back to the land… She didn’t know what she’d do then, she realised. She’d been so focused on killing him that she hadn’t thought beyond it. 

Minkowski had stopped her, that night in the bridge. Minkowski still stood between Lovelace and her revenge, and she still didn’t know what she thought of the other woman. She wasn’t even sure why she’d saved her, except that once, when she’d been floating in the dark, there’d been nobody to come for her. But they were nothing alike, not  _really._ Minkowski wasn’t one of Selberg’s victims. For all Lovelace knew, she was one of his collaborators, a good little Goddard girl, rotten to the core. She was keeping him alive. She’d even let him fix the station’s AI, even if he was at gunpoint the whole time. She’d known about his past experiments. And there was no reason to believe she  _didn’t_ know about the experiment he’d conducted on one of her own crew. 

She’d been watching them all. She’d noticed Eiffel’s reluctance to move faster than a slow jog, the way he stopped to lean against walls when he thought nobody was watching. It was hard to tell how far along he was from the outside, and she wasn’t going to ask probing questions when Minkowski already watched her almost as closely as she did Hilbert. But she did keep an eye on him, making sure he didn’t collapse during his dizzy spells, sneaking him extra protein rations to feed the growth he hadn’t even noticed. With the knowledge from Selberg’s secret archive, she could keep him comfortable, keep him stable a little while longer. Keep him  _alive._ It was less than she’d been able to do for her own people. It was all she could do now, as she desperately searched the notes for anything on a cure to the Decima Virus, a way to reverse the changes they’d suffered. But she wasn’t a scientist, and there was no way to get the information out of its creator with Minkowski around playing the heroine. So she watched, and she waited, and she hoped for a sign. 

It came during the third week after her return. They were in the algae vats, separating out the crop that was ready to be converted to fuel for the generators, a task that required at least 2 pairs of hands. Minkowski couldn’t help, with her wrist still in a sling, but she was unwilling to leave Eiffel alone with Lovelace or Hilbert, so she was there, as always, ‘supervising’. Rolling her eyes at some joke of Eiffel’s. Shoving the hair that escaped her ponytail back from her face impatiently. Acting frustratingly like a commanding officer who gave a damn, which would make it much more difficult if Lovelace had to kill her as well as Hilbert later. 

She was nearest Eiffel when he began to sway on the walkway above the vat, and ran forward to yank him away from the edge. He collapsed into her good arm, and that was the moment Lovelace realised it was happening again. 

“Look at me,” Minkowski was telling him, quietly. “It’s just pressure sickness again. You’re just having a panic attack, remember? It’ll be gone in a minute. Just breathe.” 

Lovelace was already running. There were plenty of taps around the vats, for the saltwater they used to wash in as well as for filtered drinking water. It was the former she hurriedly filled a bucket with, and ran back to the others, heedless of the mess she left in her wake. 

“Give him here,” she ordered, and Minkowski looked up at her as if she’d gone mad. Fine, they could do it this way too. She knelt and grabbed his shoulders, pulling him away from the other woman, and plunging his head into the bucket, holding him under even as he struggled against her. 

“What the hellare you doing?” Minkowski snapped, attempting to drag her away. “You’ll kill him!” 

“I’m  _saving_ him,” Lovelace responded, shortly, then, when she wouldn’t stop: “Do you  _want_ to lose him like I lost my crew? I know what I’m doing.” 

She paused, then paled. “ _No._  That’s not… I would have known… no.” 

But the evidence of her ignorance was already becoming apparent. Eiffel had stopped struggling. He hadn’t stopped  _breathing._ Water was soaking through the sides of his t-shirt, and Lovelace pulled it up to reveal the newly-opened gills along his sides, matching her own. 

“You  _didn’t_ know,” she said, more to herself than to either of the others. “Huh.” 

Minkowski looked between her and Eiffel with undisguised horror. “You thought I  _knew_ about this? That I wouldn’t have stopped it?” 

“I don’t know what you’d do.” Lovelace held her gaze, daring her to argue, to defend herself, but Minkowski only shook her head and looked back to Eiffel. 

“When will he be able to breathe air again?” 

“I don’t know. I didn’t know I still could for a long time.” She got to her feet. “I’m getting more water. That one’s running low.” 

It was at that moment that Eiffel chose to pull his head out of the bucket, gasping at the transition from water to air, but breathing nonetheless.  

They were still watching anxiously when he finally spoke. “Well, that  _sucked._ ” He leaned back over the bucket and was violently sick. 

Minkowski looked to Lovelace. “Is this…?” 

“Normal? I have no idea. He’s the only person aside from me I’ve seen survive this long.” 

“Has anyone ever told you you have a great bedside manner, captain? Because whoever it was, they were lying,” Eiffel said, still leaning over the bucket. “Ugh, does this mean I’m going to go all Ariel too?” 

Lovelace raised an eyebrow, “Never call it that again.” 

“Yes, sir,” he retorted, then groaned. For a moment they thought he was going to be sick again, but then: “Fuck. I’m Aquaman. Couldn’t it at least have been someone cool? Captain America, maybe?” 

They both stared at him for a few moments. Finally, Minkowski spoke: “...You find out you’re the latest test subject for the Decima virus and you’re complaining you got the wrong pop culture reference?” 

“Just because I’m apparently now on Team Mermaid doesn’t make me a different person,” he replied, sitting up.  

Minkowski rolled her eyes. “Small mercies. Can you stand? We should get you to the infirmary. And I should probably go and wring some information out of Hilbert.” 

“Or we could just wring his neck,” Lovelace suggested, helping Eiffel to his feet. MInkowski ignored her, focusing on demanding a list of symptoms from her communications officer that she could as easily have gotten from Isabel. That rankled almost as much as her continued insistence on keeping Hilbert alive. 

After they shut the door of the infirmary, giving Eiffel strict instructions to stick his head under the saltwater tap, she could finally call her on it: “What will Hilbert have to do before you wake up to the threat he poses to all of us? You have to see it now. We have to get rid of him before he hurts anyone else!” 

Minkowski folded her arms. “How is he going to hurt anyone from the brig? I understand your concern, but-” 

“He’s the closest thing to a monster on this base.”  _Rich coming from you,_ _Rusalka_ _._  “How can you still be defending him?” 

“Believe me, this has nothing to do with him,” she replied, stepping back, and till that moment Lovelace hadn’t realised how close she’d been standing to the other woman. “It has everything to do with the fact that he’s the only expert on the Decima virus we have.” 

“Because his expertise has saved so many people. You know what he did to my crew, right? They died, slowly and painfully, and he didn’t lift a fingerto save them.” 

“I know that.” Her voice was so  _irritating_ when she was trying to be reasonable that Lovelace cut her off before she could continue, stepping forward to back her against the wall. 

“Then why the hell would-” 

Minkowski put a hand out to stop her leaning closer, resting it against her chest. “I’m  _not_ protecting him, Lovelace. I’m keeping him alive because he’s the only person I know who might have a cure for the Decima virus.” 

Lovelace froze. “You don’t mean that.” There was no cure. There  _couldn’t_ be a cure, because if there was one, her crew died for  _nothing._ She’d been changed for nothing.  

But there was Minkowski, looking up at her with wide, serious grey eyes, and more freckles than anyone had a right to. “If keeping him alive will get you both back to your families, that’s what I’m going to do.” 

She was much too close. How had she gotten this close without her noticing? Isabel backed away suddenly, and the other woman’s hand dropped to her side.  

“ _Fine_ ,” she gritted out, and turned away. She couldn’t argue with this woman, but she didn’t have to like what she was saying. She turned away, and tried to ignore the distant sound of mocking music ringing through the walls. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have returned, bearing more Sci-Fi Mermaid AU and with So Many References. Mythology bonus: Rusalka, Lovelace's project codename, is the name of a Slavic water spirit. Rusalki are typically the vengeful spirits of murdered or betrayed young women, making it a Fun nickname for our favourite not-quite-human.
> 
> As always, you can let me know what you think in the comments here or on Tumblr @lottiesnotebook. I always love to hear what you think and I will respond to any asks/comments you have for me! See you all next Tuesday for Chapter 3, which features deep sea diving and surprise bioluminescence.


	3. iii: the turn of the tide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The base needs some external repairs, and Minkowski needs some help with her first dive since the attempted mutiny. She may get more than she bargained for. Also featuring Team Mermaids, bioluminescence, and Lottie's creative bending of the laws of biology (just go with it, OK?)

_iii:_ _the turn of the tide_

There was no way off the base. That wasn’t entirely true: there was the small submarine, intended for major external repairs and minor scientific exploration of the crevasse, but its fuel tank was too small to get far. Lovelace could leave again, if she wanted to. She’d survived outside the base, somehow, for  _years._ The rest of them didn’t have that option, but, for whatever reason, she stayed. On her most irritating days, Minkowski concluded that she stayed purely to get on her nerves, glaring and rolling her eyes and taking every opportunity to question what little authority Renée still held. She was borderline rude to Hera at every opportunity, and borderline homicidal to Hilbert any time he so much as came up in conversation. Based on most of her interactions with the rest of the crew, it would have been easy to dismiss her as yet another problem for Renée Minkowski to tackle before she could go home. 

Except. Except sometimes, Minkowski caught her watching Eiffel with an anxiety that mirrored her own. His lungs weren’t adapting well to the new gills. The attacks of temporary suffocation hadn’t stopped, and while most of the time he’d recover given a little time underwater, she remained on edge, waiting for the day when it wouldn’t work. Hera was worrying too, and it showed in her glitches whenever Eiffel’s vitals were a little off, in her almost-too-quick alerts for when his attacks began. But she could understand Hera’s worry, even empathise with it. Lovelace barely knew Eiffel, and if Minkowski was honest, she’d have admitted to herself that she disliked having even concern in common with the other woman.

Unfortunately, worrying about Eiffel wasn’t the only problem she and Lovelace had in common. The outside of the base was mostly maintained by Hera automatically, but there were occasional patches of maintenance she couldn’t perform herself. Maintenance sweeps were supposed to be performed by at least two of the human crew weekly, but between Minkowski’s arm and Eiffel’s lungs, there weren’t two of them to spare until the day they could cut the splint off her arm.

“How does it feel?” Hera asked, when EIffel had finished.

She moved her wrist experimentally. “It’s been worse,” she admitted.

“Are you sure?” Eiffel said, “It’s  _scaly._  Are you sure you’re not joining Team Mermaid?”

She actually laughed, “Never broken a bone before? It’s just dry skin. I’ll be fine.”

Dry skin was the least of her concerns. Bigger problems included their doctor-turned-mad-scientist-turned-mutineer, the AI with anxiety, and the mermaid who’d returned from the dead. The last of which she couldn’t avoid any longer.

“Minkowski? What do you want?” Lovelace leant in the doorway to her quarters, her glare undermined by her still sleep-tousled hair. On someone less dangerous, it would have been almost endearing.

“Your help.” She hoped the words didn’t sound as begrudging as they felt. “We need to perform a maintenance sweep on the Hephaestus exterior-”

“Oh  _hell_ no.” The other woman’s glower became disbelieving as well as sullen. “If you think I’m falling for-”

“I don’t-”

“Save it for someone who cares.” She turned to duck back into her quarters, but some strange impulse pushed Minkowski to lay a hand on her bare arm, waylaying her.

“Please,” she said, more quietly, “I can’t risk Eiffel having an attack out there-”

“So go alone,” Lovelace retorted immediately, but she didn’t draw away. “Oh, come on. Just because it’s not in Pryce and Carter-”

“It’s not about the regulations.” She hadn’t meant to say that aloud, but something about her tone stopped Lovelace in her tracks.

“Then what is it about- oh.” She was suddenly scrutinising Minkowski’s face in a way that felt far too personal, but turning away from her sharp dark-eyed gaze felt like backing down somehow. That didn’t make her next words easier to take: “You’re scared to go alone, aren’t you?”

“That’s ridi-” She bit back the denial as she recognised the look of something like compassion that flickered across the other woman’s face. “Yes. Yes, I’m scared.”

She didn’t step back as Lovelace continued to gaze at her, suddenly much too close. She’d revealed too much vulnerability already.

“And you want me to come supervise in case you need saving again?” An odd little smile was playing on her lips, transfixing her. She wondered if it was the first time she’d ever seen the other woman smile outside of the recordings she and Hera had found.

It didn’t compel her to answer the question, though: “Do you dream about it?” she said, instead. “The dark? The cold?”

Lovelace continued her strange, silent study a little longer before answering. “All the time,” she said, eventually, after a moment that could have been an eternity.

“Then you’ll understand why I asked.” She held the gaze of those sharp, ocean-dark eyes unflinching.  _Lovelace_ wasn’t what scared her, after all.

It was still something of a shock when the other woman stepped back, and she didn’t know why she almost gasped. 

“I’ll meet you at Airlock 3,” she said, stepping back into her quarters. “Keep your oxygen tanks for yourself, I won’t need them.”

*

Renée’s Goddard-issued diving gear had always felt closer to a second skin than the clunky, pressurised suits used for deep-sea training before. Since she’d found out about Decima, about Goddard’s drive to create crews that could survive as well under the weight of an ocean as in a pressurised base, she’d wondered if she’d received her own modifications along with the suit in the medical examinations before she’d left shore. None of this speculation prepared her for Lovelace’s appearance at the airlock lacking any equipment at all.

“You’re really going out there like that?” she asked, blinking at her as though it would resolve her image into something that made sense. But no, Lovelace remained exactly as she had been, her sports bra and shorts revealing the sea-smoothed curves of her muscles and the narrow, dark purple lines that marked her gills. They seemed far less raw than Eiffel’s, as if they’d always been part of her.

“You ready to put your eyes back in your head so we can pressurize?” Lovelace asked, but she was smirking. “I’ll be fine, Minkowski. I survived out there without a suit for months before you came along. I even have a headset Eiffel adapted, which is a step above what I’m used to.”

Even if she hadn’t known that, Lovelace’s easy grace as they scanned the outside of the base for damage would have revealed it. Minkowski had always been a good swimmer, but Lovelace cut through the water as effortlessly as if she’d been made for it. (And wasn’t there a sick note to that last thought, because she  _had?_ )

Their sweep of the external sensors passed remarkably efficiently given how distracting it was to be swimming alongside an almost-mermaid. In the dim gold glow of the external lamps of the Hephaestus, there was something luminous about her outsize dark eyes, the light catching in the tight coils of her hair. Recalling her mistake in the airlock, she tried not to stare at the gills fluttering delicately against her ribs, far less frightening than they had been on Eiffel. In some ways, the distraction was a good thing: if she was looking at Lovelace and the base, she wasn’t looking at the darkness, feeling the flood of water in her lungs- She flickered her eyes to her companion, and breathed again. She wasn’t going to drown this time.

“I think we’re done out here,” she said, eventually, the first words spoken aloud since they’d left the base. “Ready to get back into the warm?”

Lovelace paused, looking thoughtful. “How much oxygen do you have left?”

She glanced to her gauge, but it was almost unnecessary. They’d been quick, and her breathing had been far more regulated than she’d expected. “Hours yet. I brought out more than I needed.”

“In that case…” She could only see half of Lovelace’s face in the light of the base, but she seemed to be biting her lip, as if… nervous? “Do you want to see something fun? It’s - it helped me, after everything. Reminded me why we came down here. It’s not far.”

Regulations would have reminded her that side-trips were a waste of oxygen. Common sense would have said that she’d been pushing her luck already. But there was something in Lovelace’s eyes… 

“Sure, why not?” she agreed, and tried to ignore the rush of breaking a rule in spite of there being nobody to catch her down here. There was still that slight sensation of wickedness as Lovelace took her hand and pulled her away from the lights of the base, towards the crevasse in the sea floor the base was supposed to be monitoring. 

“Where are we going?” she asked, a little nervously, as the light began to grow distant, and the darkness slowly became harder to ignore, crowding around her and beginning to choke-

“Trust me?” There was a smile in Lovelace’s voice, and for a moment she sounded like the woman from her early mission logs, before Selberg and Decima and the dark water had come for her. Irrationally, the sound of her voice helped push the choking sensation away, and she began to realise that there was more she could see than the endless blue-black water. There was light coming from  _somewhere,_ just enough that she could see Lovelace pull her into a small opening in the wall of the trench, just big enough for them to wriggle through. 

“Stay close,” Lovelace added, sounding a little breathless with something like excitement in spite of the fact she wasn’t technically breathing. “You won’t want to miss this.”

Renée didn’t argue, too focused on following her through the narrow tunnel, until it suddenly opened up into a larger cavern that stole her breath from her lips. The space seemed almost cathedral-like after the cramped passage they emerged from, but that wasn’t what had surprised her. No, what had stunned her was the  _light,_  glowing dim blue-green from a huge mass of coral in the centre of the cavern, flickering multicoloured from the squid and jellyfish which flitted about them like miniature constellations, even shining from single points of algae or plankton like tiny, underwater stars. She hadn’t seen the stars in so long.  She hadn’t ever seen anything like  _this._

“ _Beautiful,_ ” she breathed, barely realising she was speaking aloud.

“Glad you like it.” Lovelace’s voice was soft and husky, somehow perfect for the moment. “It’s… really something, isn’t it?”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said, shifting to sit on the lip of the tunnel so she could look out at the shimmering lights, as if she was looking down on Atlantis itself. And there, treading water in front of her, was a real mermaid. She laughed, softly. If she’d had nightmares about leaving the base before, this was a dream from which she never wanted to wake. “Thank you. This is… extraordinary.”

“You’re welcome,” Lovelace smiled, and suddenly she realised where the light outside the cavern had come from.

“ _Oh,_ ” she murmured, half-speaking to herself, “It was you, all along.”

Lovelace looked a little startled, and - pleased? “What-”

“Look,” she said, grabbing her arm and holding it up between her cupped hands to create an artificial darkness, “You’re glowing.”

It was true. There were tiny pinpricks of light almost like freckles that gave her a slight glow. A bioluminescence all her own.

But her expression was torn, “I never noticed before,” she muttered, looking up at Renée as if she couldn’t gauge what her reaction should be.

“It’s beautiful,” Renée told her, quietly, and meant it. It should have been frightening, alien even, but… “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Her gaze slipped from Isabel to the cavern beyond, and she tried not to wonder which she was talking about. 

“Oh,” Lovelace said, settling beside Minkowski on the narrow ledge, and they were silent for a time, watching the cavern full of stars deep beneath the waves.

“Dominic would love this,” she said, because it was true. She didn’t realise she’d spoken aloud until Lovelace stiffened beside her.

“Who’s Dominic?”

“My husband,” she replied, and wondered why the words provoked a twinge of guilt in her stomach. “He’s a marine biologist-”

“We should get going,” Lovelace said, too quickly, and the moment was utterly broken. “We don’t want your air running out.”

“It’s fine-” Minkowski began, but she was already being towed back through the tunnel. 

“We need to get you back to shore in one piece,” Lovelace continued, and there was something forced in her tone. “You’ve still got something to go home to, after all.”

She  _did_ still have someone to go home to. She had a life and a family and a world up on the surface, and she was going to get back to it, whatever Goddard planned. But when she closed her eyes in her bunk that night, it wasn’t the shoreside stars she was seeing. She saw the deep, phosphorescent glow of the cavern lights, and hoped in her dreams she was watching them with the right person.

*

She should never have taken Minkowski to the cavern. It had been easy, before, to dismiss her replacement as another cog in Goddard’s machine, some officious little bureaucrat whose rank was little more than a courtesy title. Of course, the woman had to ruin that impression by  _caring._ And she did care, about Eiffel, about Hera, even about  _her._ Sometimes, Lovelace caught her worried eyes tracking her as she paced the mess hall, or the bridge, or the infirmary, as if she was watching some kind of wounded beast - something she feared and wanted to help in equal measure. It was infuriating, and yet she wouldn’t leave well alone.

“Do we have a problem, captain?” She’d finally managed to corner her in the bridge, Eiffel having holed himself up in the comms room to giggle with Hera about something.

_My problem is you._ “I don’t know what you mean,” she shrugged, not looking up at her.

“Really.” Her syllables held a cut-glass precision that only appeared when she was angry. “Because as far as I can see-”

“I’m not down here to make friends _,_ lieutenant. I’m not making that mistake again.” It was the wrong thing to say. She could  _feel_ Minkowski’s gaze soften on her back, too much like the touch of a hand for comfort.

“We don’t have to be friends. We just have to work out a way to work as a team for long enough to get us back to land.” The edge in her tone had dulled to something like sympathy.

“Back to land.” The words tasted unexpectedly bitter. “Do you really think I’m going back there like  _this?_  Or Eiffel, if he gets this far? The only one of us who has anything waiting up there is you.”

There was a sharp inhale. Then: “I - I never thought of it that way.”

“You wouldn’t have.” Of course she wouldn’t, the perfect girl with the perfect life and the lucky,  _lucky_ husband waiting for her back on shore. “You’re not- you’re not like us.”

The wave of guilt crashed over her moments too late. Minkowski had already gone when she turned to say something,  _anything._  Not that it mattered. She  _wasn’t_ like them. She was still human. She could still go home. That was enough to justify keeping her at arm’s-length for as long as she could resist her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, I'm scraping this update in just under midnight where I am, so happy update day! This is... probably my favourite chapter of anything I've written on my own? And it's entirely self-indulgent, but I'd love to hear what you all think. Only 2 chapters left, though I have ideas for more fic set in this universe that would be less solely-Minlace focused, so let's see how we go. As always, leave me comments here or on my Tumblr @lottiesnotebook, I love every single one of you, and I hope we all survive the next episode together.


	4. iv: full fathom five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiffel is lost. Somehow, they have to carry on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, we all survived the finale (I hope), and this contains absolutely nothing related to it aside from a reference to The Tempest! It does, however, contain the most NSFW scene I've written so far, so enjoy! More mermaids next week, I promise.

Isabel's best intentions went awry, of course. They lost Eiffel to a storm that blew up in moments from nothing, one Hera’s sensors somehow missed. The AI hadn’t been programmed to cope with the guilt, but then again, none of them had. Eiffel wasn’t a member of her crew, wasn’t her responsibility to save or to mourn, but that didn’t make a difference anymore. 

“I survived outside the base for a year,” she reminded Minkowski, once. “I caught fish, ate seaweed… I survived. He could have too.” 

Minkowski’s only reply had been a tight little smile, pretending to accept the false hope with grace. It was all Lovelace could give her, after all. Not that she didn’t try, in small ways that barely mattered: taking up some of the running of the station so that Minkowski could keep running the scans that got more and more futile with each passing day; glaring at Selberg whenever he opened his mouth to mention the pointlessness of looking for Eiffel when he’d been missing for weeks already. It wasn’t enough, but it was… something. She could afford to give Minkowski this if it kept them both standing a little longer. 

And they  _were_ still standing. If anything, Lovelace was dealing better with the endless state of emergency than she had with the relative quiet. No time to think of revenge or any future beyond the immediate as the tiny world they inhabited decayed around them almost faster than they could repair it. No time to think about  _feelings_  when none of them had the time to sleep. Selberg, cockroach that he was, showed no signs of strain, though that could have been due to a surgical removal of all human emotion. Hera… Hera was more of a problem. Her glitches were becoming more frequent, her system failures becoming an uncomfortable pattern, and none of them had the training to properly repair whatever Selberg had damaged when he ripped her out of the station. 

Which left Minkowski. Minkowski who was, at first glance, handling everything about as well as Lovelace could have expected anyone in her position to. If the guilt over losing Eiffel and the pressure of their tenuous survival weighed heavily on her, it didn’t show in her work. It showed in the tightness of her rare smiles, the stiff line her shoulders had formed, the dark circles under her eyes. But it never slipped into her behaviour until Lovelace interrupted her inventory of the contraband locker. 

“Minkowski, we need you- are you  _crying?_ ” she demanded. She was hunched over the open locker, shoulders shaking. She scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve, but there was no hiding her tears or her red face. She was  _not_ a pretty crier, which shouldn’t have been endearing, but… Lovelace laid a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay-” 

She didn’t expect Minkowski to turn and fold into her arms. “I found his  _stupid_ cigarettes,” she sobbed. “I used to get so angry about them, you know? Said he’d kill us all, but when he started coughing I thought he’d only managed to kill himself. Stupid,  _petty-_ ” 

“You couldn’t have known,” she soothed, forgetting the suspicions she’d once held. “You were his commanding officer, it was your job to be up his ass about the rules.” 

“Would you have been?” she demanded. “Maybe he’d’ve been better if- if you’d been commanding his mission. Maybe he’d still be here.” 

“And maybe my crew would still be here if you’d been commanding their mission, but god,Minkowski, you can’t take responsibility for everything that’s happened in this hellhole. That’s what we have Hilbert for!” 

Minkowski gave a watery laugh, “What would I do without you?”  

She looked up at her, tearstained, lips slightly parted. Without quite knowing why she did it, Lovelace raised a hand to her face, wiping away her tears. 

“You’d be fine without me,” she told her, “You’re Lieutenant Commander Minkowski, you can survive anything.” 

“And you’re a terrible liar, Captain Lovelace,” she retorted, but she was smiling now, smiling properly, and in another world, it would have been the perfect moment for a kiss.  

Instead, Minkowski stepped back, suddenly breathless. “We should get back to-” 

“Yes, yes,” Lovelace agreed, backing away from her. “Back to work.”  

 _You don’t need this,_  she told herself. It was a distraction, an unnecessary complication to an already untenable situation. No, she didn’t need Renée Minkowski, but that didn’t stop Isabel  _wanting_ her. 

* 

“When are you going to give up these calls?” 

If her conversation with Isabel had given her hope, any conversation with Hilbert held the seeds of despair. “When we get a callback,” she replied, testily. “Someone will pick us up eventually. It’s only a matter of time.” 

“After everything, you’re still convinced Goddard is coming back for us?” He shook his head. “Stupid.” 

She looked up from the comms panel. “Excuse me?” 

“I said ‘ _stupid_ ’, commander. Goddard has no intention of reclaiming  _failures_ like us.” 

“Shut up.” That was Lovelace, leaning against the wall, arms folded. “She’s doing something to get us out of here, unlike some I could mention.” 

He gave a harsh laugh. “If you think anyone’s listening out for us, you’re as naive as she is. We’re all dead up on the surface anyway.” 

“If you don’t have anything  _useful_ to tell us, I’d suggest keeping your mouth shut.  _Doctor._ ” Minkowski turned to glare at him properly, but he only laughed again. 

“Oh, you thought I was being metaphorical? Not your brightest moment, but-” 

“ _You’re_ dead,” Minkowski said, frowning. “I’m not _,_  and-” 

“You didn’t know?” He was looking at her almost pityingly. “You were dead the minute you agreed to the mission, commander. Your husband’s been widowed over a year. You don’t have a home up there any more than we do.” 

She stared at him, blankly. “You’re lying.” 

“Pointless lie to tell.” 

“This is all another one of your sick little games-” 

“What would lying get? Be  _realistic,_ Minkowski. Are they going to let you out knowing what you know? Better you die down here. Safer and cleaner if you’re already dead up there.” 

The rest of the room was fading from her vision, darkness black as water reaching out for her. She forced her lips to form the next words: “Prove it.” 

“It’s been months. You think Cutter’s ignoring you by accident? Men like that don’t have accidents. He’s just ignoring a dead woman’s last calls home.” 

Lovelace was saying something: “Ignore him, he’s just trying to get to you-” 

It felt horribly distant. The words no longer made sense to her ears. She got to her feet, stumbling slightly as the ground seemed to rock beneath her. Lovelace attempted to reach out to her, but she shrugged her off. It was easier to breathe, out in the corridor. Easier to think, to remember that what was important right now was putting one foot in front of the other, keeping things running. 

“Hera?” she said aloud. 

“Yes commander?” Even the AI sounded worried, but she shrugged it off as she had Lovelace. “Are you-” 

“I’m fine. What’s next on the itinerary for today?” 

“Com-mander?” Her vocals were glitching again. “Is that really a good idea?” 

“We don’t have time for this, Hera, you know that. Give me something to  _do._ ”  

“If you say so.” Her voice was dubious, but it didn’t matter. The tasks she listed were mindless busy work, but that didn’t matter either. Nothing mattered as long as she didn’t have to stop, because stopping meant thinking and if she did that she’d start screaming and never stop. And then, suddenly, Hera’ ran out of busy work to give her. 

“Go to  _bed,_  commander,” she said, peevishly. “The station’s not going to fall down if you take 7 hours off.” 

 _But I might._  “There must be something else,” she insisted, trying not to hear the desperation in her own voice. 

“Nope, you’re not getting around me this time.  _Sleep._ I hear humans need that.” 

“Hera, seriously.” There was no response. “You’re ignoring me now?  _Real_  mature.” She was yelling at an empty room, trying to get the attention of a disembodied voice, and she wondered if nervous breakdowns were usually this  _funny._ She almost laughed, but laughing now would probably be a worse sign for her sanity than screaming. But sleeping would be worse than either, even worn to the bone as she felt. She needed… she needed  _something._ And her treacherous feet had already brought her to Lovelace’s door, as they nearly had so many other times. This time, though, she knocked. 

The Lovelace who answered wasn’t the one she’d imagined. Her eyes were hazy with sleep, her hair a cloud of fluffy curls. Softer somehow. 

“Minkowski?” she yawned, blinking at her as though she couldn’t quite believe she was there. “Are you… you’re not okay. Do you need something? A talk? A  _drink?_ ” 

Renée shook her head, but stepped past her as she stood back from the door and closed it behind her, pushing her back against it with a long, drawn-out sigh. Then she opened her eyes, and looked up at the other woman properly for the first time in what felt like an eternity. 

“I need to forget,” she said, softly. “Help me?” 

Lovelace gazed down at her for a long moment, and then closed the space between them and kissed her far too gently, lips soft and warm and  _burning._ There was the taste of sea-salt there, but on her skin it was sweeter than honey. 

"Like that?" Lovelace drew back, searching her face for  _something_ with those ocean-dark eyes.  

"Like this," she replied, pulling her back down to kiss her more fiercely. She was slow to respond at first, almost surprised, but then pressed her back against the door until she was pinned against it, breathless and drowning in the darkness again, but now it was different. Now she  _burned,_ Lovelace's hands gripping her hips with an almost-perfect ache of pressure. Her own hands wandered, memorising by touch the strength that lingered in every line of her back, the way she gasped as her fingers ghosted over the delicate ridges of her gills, and finally caught the edges of her tank-top, pulling it over her head.  

" _Fuck,"_ Isabel gasped, as they broke apart momentarily. "We shouldn't-" 

"Please _,"_  she whispered, and then they were kissing again. There was a desperation there, to explore every inch of each other as if they would never get another chance, to learn the feeling of Isabel's hands against every inch of her skin, the soft moan she made as Renée bit down on the delicate skin of her throat, the way that in the darkness, every freckle mapped out a constellation on her skin, burning brighter than all the imagined stars above them. 

" _Beautiful,_ " she murmured, pressing her back towards the bed as she pulled away layers of her uniform.  

" _You're_ beautiful," Isabel replied, freeing her hair from its braid so that it fell about them both in a curtain of shimmering red. "Renée..." 

"We can have this. We  _need_ this."  _I need this,_  she realised, as her blood fizzed under her skin at every touch of Isabel's hands. "Just... let me have tonight. We can think tomorrow." 

There was no room for thought there, as Isabel fell apart under her fingers and then her mouth, as they flowed and tangled together in the darkness, the only pinpricks of light glowing from Isabel's skin. It was dark, and messy, and  _perfect,_  and when she finally slept, she didn't dream at all.


	5. v: cast away the shadows of your heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A call for help is received, and a sea-change recognised.

_v: cast away the shadows of your heart_

She should've said no. The real Isabel Lovelace, the  _human_ Isabel Lovelace, who'd come down to the depths so long ago, would've said no, she hoped. But she was so far from that woman now that she barely recognised herself. Maybe it was a new weakness, this inability to say no, but how could she turn away from the bruised ache in Minkowski's ( _Renée's_ ) eyes, from her hands so gentle and so wickedly clever, from the softness of her sighed ( _moaned_ ) ' _Isabel's_? She held her name between her teeth as though it would break if she released it outside of their stolen moments in the dark, and yet each time it escaped she made it sound like the most beautiful word she'd ever spoken. It was almost enough to make her forget they weren't lovers, not  _really._ This was just the easiest way for Renée to forget. 

It was difficult to remind herself of that now, though, as they lay tangled beneath the sheets, the darkness broken only by the slight glow of her skin. She'd hated it, once, when the lights started to appear, but now...

"You're the closest I've come to seeing the sky in more than a year, you know that?" Even without the lights, she could have heard Minkowski's voice softened by a smile. Her fingers wandered dreamily across Lovelace's bare skin, connecting points of bioluminescence as if marking out constellations. "You're  _so_ beautiful."

"Not really, not like you," she countered.  _Beautiful._  Renée used the word too much to describe her, but it was a kinder word than any she'd used for herself in a long time.  _Freak. Monster. Inhuman._  "You don't... mind that I'm like this?"

"You're still  _you,_ " she replied, as if no other answer made sense. "You've changed, but so have I. We've all suffered our sea-changes down here, but you're still Isabel Lovelace."

Something about that simple reassurance squeezed at her heart, and she didn't want to think about that. She  _couldn't_ think about it, so instead, she captured Renée's wandering hand with her own. "And you're still the same  _incredibly_ distracting Renée Minkowski. You really want to talk right now?"

She smirked, and leaned up to kiss her without replying. It was better that way, with less talking. It made it easier to ignore her own desire to trace her own constellations into Renée's freckles, mapped and memorised and marked out indelibly into her mind. It was the kind of desire that would burn her, when Hilbert finally admitted he was lying or someone picked up their distress calls or when the pull of the song from the abyss finally claimed her. But for now, she could sink back into Renée's arms, beneath the sheets and the waves, and remember what drowning felt like.

*

It was easier, now.  _Everything_ was easier now Minkowski had given up the land for lost. It was strange, how much energy  _hoping_ had taken, as if her life, her home, her shoreside loves, had been anchors holding her to the sea bed. And now they'd been cut away from her, leaving fraying threads like severed nerve endings trailing behind her, catching and burning and  _aching_ if she thought about them too hard.

But then there was Isabel. Isabel who's sharp edges had been dulled and softened in their clashes until they fit together perfectly, smooth and perfect as sea-glass. The maintenance bickering remained, but they'd somehow slipped into seamless synchronisation without her noticing, Isabel's hands moving as flawlessly as though they were part of her. Now it had begun, their entanglement seemed almost inevitable, in retrospect, as if they'd been resisting the pull of the tide. There was nothing more than the immediate future they could worry about, and if it made things easier to flow with the current rather than fight it, that was what they'd do.

And yet... she caught herself thinking of the future more than she wanted to. Of waking up to a bed shared with constellations of stars every night. Of Isabel's burning lips on her skin without the added ache of guilt. Of her expression when she thought Renée couldn't see – hope and fear and resignation warring in her eyes. It would be enough to break a heart, if hers wasn't already broken. There was no future for them, and yet... she kept making the calls, less frequently than before, but still calling out into the void in case someone answered. And until they did, there was always one more night of Isabel's hair spilling across her pillows like ink, and the blessed release from having to think or feel anything at all. It was easier to keep going on the promise of one more night like that than on the hope for a shore she might never see again. 

And yet, though she kept making the calls, she still couldn't quite believe it when the Urania hailed her back.  _Someone's coming,_  she realised, giddily, after the channel cut out,  _someone heard._  She was going to get out, going to see the sun and the sky again, going to go  _home-_  and that was when she recalled that she didn't have a home, and the black reached out for her again, and she couldn't  _breathe,_ but this wasn't Decima, it was entirely self-inflicted,  _it was all her fault_ -

" _Minkowski_ _._ " That was Lovelace, who shouldn't be here, shouldn't see her like this- "Renée, you have to  _breathe._  Hera said you were freaking out, but- what happened? Just- just breathe, and try to explain." There was something  _wrong_ in her voice, and she realised distantly that Lovelace sounded afraid.

"I'm not- it's not-" The words wouldn't come, tangling in her throat, and she let the other woman pull her close in spite of the crushing wave of guilt. In Isabel's arms, she could breath again, and the knowledge she didn't feel like a traitor lingered bitter in her throat even after the panic left. "Someone hailed us. Help's coming."

She felt Isabel stiffen, then draw back. “That’s…” She didn’t finish the sentence, looking down at her not impassively but… unsure? When had she had time in the endless crises to learn to read her face so well. “Are you happy?”

“I don’t know,” she said, aloud, and realised it was true. “They- they may not be coming to help us at all, if Command sent them. I don’t want- I don’t know-“ 

The other woman stepped back completely, and Isabel became Lovelace once more. “I should go. Hera has me on maintenance and-“

“Go,” she agreed, distantly, and watched her turn and leave without the word  _stay_ slipping unguarded from her lips.  _Are you happy?_  She should be happy, she should be  _ecstatic_  at her second chance. But the question remained, like a leaden weight in her chest, gradually numbing her core to ice.

*

She avoided Minkowski after the call. It was easier for both of them that way. She could still go home, forget this underworld, return to the land of the living. There would be no such liberties for Lovelace or Hilbert, walking, talking proof of their employer’s crimes. No, the kindest thing the ‘rescue’ party could be bringing her was death, and not whatever awful fate Goddard could concoct for their first successful “mermaid project”. But avoiding her in her waking hours wasn’t enough. Even after the sheets had been changed, her scent still clung to them, and sometimes, half-awake, she’d see her hair spilled out across the pillow in every shade the flickering lights could capture, bright as fire to dark as blood, and reach out to touch someone she knew wasn’t there. Between that and the music, she suspected that the Decima had broken something important in her brain, something vital.

She almost thought it was a hallucination when Minkowski finally appeared at her door, stubborn and defiant and  _beautiful._  But a delusion couldn’t push past her before she slammed the door shut. 

“You’re avoiding me,” she said, simply, arms folded as she leaned her back against the closed door. “Is this about the Urania?”

“No.”  _Liar._ “It’s about the rescue. About you going home, to your  _real_ life.”  _To your husband, and your family, and the many, many people who must love you up there._

“Because this isn’t real?”

She gave a bitter laugh, “Is  _anything_ real down here? We’ve got mermaids, mad scientists… let’s face it, there’s nothing ‘real’ about this nightmare.”

“You think so?” There was a dangerous glint in Minkowski’s eyes as she stepped forward, resting her hands lightly on either side of her waist, just below her gills. Then, deliberately, she stepped closer again, pressing them together lightly. “This doesn’t feel real to you?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

She stepped back and sat as her knees caught the edge of the bed, running a hand through the back of her hair. “You’re still human. They can take you home, back to your husband and your family – you could be  _happy.”_

“Back to who I used to be?”

“Back to who you  _are._ You can still go back. You're the only one who can still go back." She felt the impulse to reach out, take her hands, make her  _understand,_ but she held herself still. "I won't be the thing keeping you from that. I'm not going to be an anchor holding you down here, Renée."

Something in her face softened, and it shouldn't have  _hurt,_ it shouldn't have held that power, but it ached nonetheless, and she flinched away from it even as the other woman stepped forward and took her hands. "You're not an anchor to me, Isabel. You're... I don't know, a compass. Or the North Star, guiding me."

"Guiding you to the bottom of the sea? You have a life _-_ "

"I  _had_ a life. But even if it was still there for me to go back to, things are different now. The world up there's changed without me.  _I've_ changed. And you... you gave me reasons to keep going. To keep changing, wherever I end up." Her smile was delicate, too fragile for the weight of the water above them, but it was  _there._ "I don't know what to call this, but I'm not letting it go. I'm not letting  _you_ go."

Maybe this was a hallucination, but it was too late to resist it now, so instead, she leant down to kiss her, memorising the feel of that smile, of Renée's fingers entangling with her own, of the sound of  _I'm not letting you go_ still hanging in the air, clear enough to blot out the music from the depths. 

"Then don't," she said, smiling herself when she drew back for air. There'd be time to think of Goddard and the Urania and the endless list of dangers later. For now, though, there was this: the warmth of her smile, and the amused light in her eyes. "What are you thinking?" She asked, pulling her back towards the bed.

"It's stupid," she warned, but she was still smiling.

"Then I  _definitely_ want to know."

"It's... about getting back to the surface. Even if that happens..." She paused, looking up at her, and reached up to trace the line of her cheekbone with her fingers. " _I have lingered in the chambers of the sea._  I can't go back and pretend I haven't, even if I wanted to."

Isabel toyed with a lock of her hair. "Are we really talking about poetry now?" She asked, and smiled as Renée coloured. "No, it's cute, I just... wouldn't've thought it of you."

She leant down to kiss her again, and tried not to let the rest of that poem echo through her mind along with the music.

_We have lingered in the chambers of the sea_    
 _By sea-girls wreathed in seaweed red and brown_    
 _Till human voices wake us, and we drown._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the last official chapter of my weird self-indulgent scifi mermaid AU! It's been a lot of fun, so there may be more (potentially including Maxwell, if you're interested) in this universe to come, but we'll see. For now, let me know what you think of this story either here in the comments or @lottiesnotebook on Tumblr, I live for positive reinforcement.

**Author's Note:**

> So, that's the first chapter of Sea-Change! I'm really happy to share this with you, and will always respond to comments/reviews/prompts either here or on my Tumblr @lottiesnotebook. I love hearing what you all think!


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